Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

Fumiko Hayashi
Fukuya
Nobuo Sadaoka
Fujiyama
Kishi, Fumiko's Mother
Kyôko Hinatsu
Haruhiko Itatsu
Gorô Shirasaka
Tamura
Fumiko's Father
Uenoyama
Yasuko Murano